Regdar looked both perplexed and disturbed by Sonja's conjecture. "You think that creature was native to the Plane of Ice?"
She shrugged. "I can't be sure, but that would be my guess. If someone or something opened a portal to the Plane of Ice, that could he the source of the scorpion, the winter wolf, and all this ice and snow. That doesn't explain everything. It doesn't explain how a fully grown snowbloom turned up in an area that wasn't even cold a few days ago, but at least it's a theory, which is more than we've had so far."
"Sonja," said Hennet, "aren't you jumping to conclusions? Maybe that ice scorpion was created in some evil mage or priest's laboratory. Isn't that possible? We don't even know for sure that this Plane of Ice exists."
"I know," said Sonja. "It exists. I've been there."
Stunned silence fell over the others. "When? How?" asked Lidda.
"All of those wishing to be druids must pass through some sort of extreme test of endurance. Many initiates die, and the ritual is seldom spoken of. My test was to spend time on the Plane of Ice. My parents opened the portal for me."
Sonja looked at Lidda. "You asked me before if I was ever cold, and I said I was once. This was the time." She closed her eyes as if trying to block out an unpleasant vision. "I don't know if I can describe it to you. There's no sun, no moon or stars. There's no natural heat from any source. Fires won't burn. The wind never ceases howling. Blizzards last years, icebergs are the size of continents. The cold there is simply unimaginable.
"I was there for only a day. When my parents retrieved me I was frozen nearly to death. I have seen the Plane of Ice, my friends, and I have no desire to see it again."
Hennet's exhilaration over defeating the ice scorpion was soundly demolished. "What happens if we don't seal the portal?" he asked.
Sonja answered, "Our plane eventually becomes like the Plane of Ice."
"Then we must not fail," Regdar said with utter conviction. He lifted Lidda onto his shoulders. "C'mon, Lidda. Let's go find your sword." They left Sonja and Hennet alone.
"Don't be so crestfallen, Hennet," Sonja said. "Remember why you became an adventurer."
"I always try to," replied the sorcerer. "Still, at moments like this, I wish some other adventurer were doing this instead of me."
"Hennet," she asked, "do you love me?"
Hennet was taken aback at the question. Instead of answering, he simply stared.
"It doesn't matter," said Sonja. "It doesn't matter if you love me or if you don't or if you're envious of Regdar or he's envious of you. It doesn't even matter if I love nature and despise civilization. In the face of this, none of our concerns matter. The worst things we dared to dream are all true, and it's up to us to set it right."
"That's very humbling, Sonja," said Hennet.
"Is it?" she said softly. "I think rather the opposite is true. The heroes on whose stories you were weaned had no personalities, no personal concerns. They were not people, and neither must we be. If you want to be a hero of legend, the hero who saves not just the girl, but also the world, this is your chance. But if you become a legend, you'll no longer be Hennet."
9
There was no mistaking the towers of ice of which Savanak spoke. They were stark, ivory-white ziggurats, reaching so high above the ground that the party wondered why no one had seen them while the Fell Forest still stood. Perhaps nobody ever cared to get close enough to look. They loomed in the distance like mysterious giants-frost giants, of course-standing, watching, ever silent. There were seven of them in all, each cylindrical and twice as thick as any redwood, placed irregularly and unpredictably across a strangely terraced surface where snow collected on different planes. The impression was of a nightmare painting or the surreal contours of a frozen level of the Hells.
"Be on guard," said Sonja as they drew near. "From what Savanak said, this is the dragon's lair. Even if it's not, there's something strange about this." She paused a moment, giving the others a chance to test their skills of observation.
"I think I know," said Lidda. She held up her hand, her palm open against the wind. "Where we're standing," she explained, "the wind is blowing directly at us, from the direction of the towers. But look over there." She pointed to the side. "Watch the snow. It's not going in the same direction at all. It seems to be blowing directly away from these towers, too."
"That's it," said Sonja. "Unless I miss my guess, that means that our portal is someplace in the center."
"Great!" said Hennet. "Now let's get in there and seal it before our dragon friend pays us a third visit."
"Something feels wrong," Sonja confessed as they approached the closest tower. "No guards. Nothing defending the portal. And what are these towers?"
When they reached the closest one, sheltered from the wind behind it, Regdar ran a gloved hand and scraped off the white coating of ice. Underneath, it was smooth and pitch black.
"It looks like basalt," ventured Lidda. "This is really some tower."
Regdar and Hennet brushed off more of the ice as Sonja turned to regard the strange terraces among the towers.
"You see what this is?" she said. "It's a city. Or maybe something smaller, like a military outpost." She took a few steps. Her footsteps showed evidence of stone, not ground, beneath the ice. With a gesture, she cast a spell and removed a large area of ice, revealing a solid gray surface beneath, a perfectly flat and featureless granite walkway. It was not made of slabs laid through manual labor but created whole, apparently through wizardry.
"Mages," she concluded. "Many mages must have lived here."
Hennet concurred. "Who else would live in so many towers?"
Sonja took another step forward, then gave a shriek of surprise. "What is it?" asked Hennet.
"Come over here," she said. The others joined her and instantly understood what she was reacting to. Past a certain spot, the wind stopped. Or rather the wind ceased to exist-it just wasn't present. Like the eye of the hurricane, this was the calm at the center of this whole magical ice storm. To the party, badly windburned and tired of being pelted with snow and ice over the past few days, this came as a considerable relief.
"We really are at the core," said Regdar. "Then the portal-"
"No one move," blurted Sonja. "The portal could be invisible. You could walk right into it and pass through to another plane by accident."
Sonja closed her eyes for a moment and cast another spell, one that would reveal the auras of magic around them. As she did, some of the party's clothes and weapons lit up with a serene, blue glow, but that was barely noticed amid the blue light that streaked over the entire field. The color that denoted the presence of magic was so strong there that it shone all across the frozen city, draping the whole place in azure tones that flickered and glimmered. Even the faces of the party were painted blue now. The source of this magic was what looked like a large, vertical slit in the air near the center of the frozen city, as tall as Regdar. It was a tear in space out of which energy coursed and flowed, pulsing and seething as it gushed magic.
"So that's what a portal looks like?" Lidda asked. "I've often wondered."
"We not actually seeing the portal," Sonja explained, "but the magic it generates. That's what we're looking at. Seeing it, I now realize it's not a true portal but rather a rift."
"What's the difference," said Regdar.
"A portal is like a door," Sonja explained, "something calculated and measured that was designed to be somewhere. A rift is more like a break or a hole in a wall, a crude, makeshift rip between the worlds. It comes about through violence, not planning."